1.World War II (1939-1945): As a six-year-old child in 1949, I moved to Germany with my parents for three years. My dad was a member of the U.S. military occupation forces. At that point in time, Germany had not yet fully recovered from its devastation. I got to see the horrible destruction that war can bring to a country and what it can do to its people.

2.9/11/2001: When I watched those towers fall on TV, the terrible destruction I saw as a child in Germany blasted back into my mind. War had come to my own homeland and I wasn’t prepared for it. This was especially true since my mom and daughter had been in those towers just a few short years before they came down.

3.The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): Since I lived in Florida at the time, not too far from Cuba, those very dangerous days were seared into my memory. The danger of nuclear war was ever present but I when I came home from college right in the middle of that event, it all become extremely real. One day, I happened to be standing near the main road going north and south through Orlando when a huge convoy of army trucks, troops and missiles went by. It seemed to go on forever, heading for south Florida.

4.The Second Seminole War (1835-1842): I write about this war in Book I of The St. Augustine Trilogy because I discovered its importance while visiting the St. Augustine National Cemetery. There I discovered three large stone pyramids covering the bodies of over 1,400 American soldiers killed in all the Florida Seminole Wars.

5.Just Before the Russian Revolution of 1917: A number of years ago, I had a waking dream of facing a long line on Russian soldiers across a huge snow-coved plaza. There were many other people around me and almost immediately the soldiers began firing. Bullets went through my body and I fell face first into the snow. Strangely, I didn’t notice any pain but I knew I was dying.

As a student of history, I thought what I experienced must have had something to do with the Russian Revolution.So a week or two after that dream, I spent a lot of time in the library. I searched through history books looking for pictures that might give me a hint if what I saw in my dream had any basis in reality. After several hours of effort, I found the exact scene but it was in 1905, not 1917, the official date of the Russian Revolution. I had forgotten that there was a smaller 1905 revolt against the Czar in St. Petersburg where Russian soldiers killed hundreds of protestors.

6.The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963): I was in college then and n my view, Jack Kennedy represented young America and all that was good in our country. His assassination brought home to me the harsh realities of the world as it is and not as I hoped it would be.

7.The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion (1986): From my home in the Orlando Florida area, I had watched many a shuttle launch even though Cape Kennedy was 50 miles away. But on that day in 1986, I was teaching 7th grade geography when the news came of the explosion. I’ll never forget watching TV with my students as we all stared in horror.

8.Hurricane Donna (1960): I was a senior in a Florida high school that year when the storm hit. At first, I thought it was going to be great fun. But when those raging winds started really howling and forcing torrential rains through the concrete block walls of my family’s home, I realized then that Mother Nature was nothing to trifle with.

9.The Vietnam War (1964-1975): Growing up in a military family as I did, I believed that whenever the U.S. used it might against other nations it had to be the right move. In my eyes, we were the good guys all the time, just as we were in World War II. But as the deaths mounted in Vietnam, I learned the bitter truth that we could indeed be wrong.

10.First Moon Landing (1969): I’ve always been fascinated with astronomy and the contents of our universe but to actually see people land on another world blew my mind. And to me, it showed humankind could literally accomplish anything.

BLURB

An otherworldly, evil and dangerous force infests America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida. Everyone living there, or visiting, is at risk in ways too horrible to imagine.

Standing between this invader and the people of St. Augustine are teenagers Jeff and Carla, the mysterious Native American shaman, Lobo, and Lyle, the homeless guy.

In their quest to save themselves and all the inhabitants of this ancient, Florida city, Jeff and Carla uncover lost parts of St. Augustine history, push past the limits of space and time, and encounter what they come to realize are the true walking dead.

A former award winning educator, Doug writes about things paranormal and historical. His interest in the paranormal comes from personal experiences as detailed in the nonfiction adult book he and wife wrote titled, An Explosion of Being: An American Family's Journey into the Psychic. Out of those events and extensive historical research, he then created Sliding Beneath the Surface for young adults, Book I of the St. Augustine Trilogy. Doug set his trilogy in the oldest and most haunted city in the United States, St. Augustine, Florida.